Stuck in the Mud December 24th 2003

"Stuck in the Mud" - Page 2

There had been some discussion between Joe and me about when low tide was that morning. I had read where it would be low tide at 7:30 at Southwest Pass of the Mississippi River. Joe had read a report showing low tide at 10:30 in Venice. Either way, with the north wind further assisting the flowing of the water out of the marsh, we knew the tide was about as low as we had ever seen it. So at 8:30, we decided to head home. Because of the pot hole behind the blind, we knew from experience we would be able to get the mud boat moving fast enough to propel us out of pond. Before rocketing out of the pond, we decided we would ride out into the big lake to check the other blind and see if there was water there in case we need to use it the next time we had no water in our pond.

Joe mashed the accelerator of the mud boat. We lunged out of the hole and into the mud and off we went. As we came out of the pond, instead of heading straight out as he normally does, Joe decided (on his own I might add) that he would turn left into what is normally a canal and a shortcut to the other blind. Well, there is another thing one should always remember when driving a mud boat in the mud other than not to stop. And that is that the boat does not turn well and it is very hard to steer. Sweeping turns are all you can do. You cannot turn sharply when you have a head of steam in the mud. Joe knew this but obviously didn't recall the time his younger brother Buck had come to pick Joe & me up on a similar low tide morning. Buck was going too fast to make the turn into the pond and ended up getting airborne over a small island before landing in the canal behind the blind. He was lucky because he made it over the island and there was a little more water in the canal on that day. But the turbulence caused by getting airborne knocked over the battery in the boat and it nearly caught on fire, but that's another story.

So today, as we came flying out of the pond, Joe tried to make the tight left-hand turn into the dried up canal. After a few seconds it was obvious to both of us that we might not to make it. Joe pushed hard on the rudder but the boat did not want to turn and we headed straight for an island. Because we were going fairly fast, I figured we would either glance off the island and have enough speed to keep going, or we were going to come to an abrupt halt. I braced myself for impact. As we hit the island sideways, the back of the mudboat jumped up on land and stopped our forward progress quickly. The boat jolted hard to the left. We weren't thrown out but we were stuck - big time - 60 yards from the nearest water. This was not good.

Our view after the boat stopped - 60 yards from water.

Joe was very distressed that he had put us in this position. I could tell he was upset with himself and I tried to ease his pain by telling him stuff like "It could be worse. It could be raining". I don't think it helped, he was really mad at himself. He kept apologizing to me but he didn't really need to. I could think of a million things that could be worse than being stuck in the mud at low tide on a nice sunny day in the south Louisiana marshland with my best friend Joe. It was around 9 o'clock or shortly thereafter when this happened so the timing of the low tide came into play. If low tide was at 7:30 as I had read, then the water should have started to come up by then. If low tide was at 10:30 as Joe was sure that it was, then we had another couple of hours before we would see the water rise. At the time, there no water coming in anywhere. Joe had been right about the tide. We knew we were in for a long wait.

The mud boat high & dry.

For those that don't know about the mud in the marsh, you can't walk on it. It's like quick sand. When you step into it you go straight down to your crotch. So it's not like we could have pulled the boat across the mud 60 yards to water. That wasn't going to happen.

With time on our hands we decided to see if we could walk to the other blind on the lake. It was a little treacherous and a lot of wasted energy but we did make it. There was no water in front of the other blind. We were glad we didn't try to hunt there. So we walked back to the boat. Joe decided to try and take a nap so he laid down next to some canes to block the wind and rested. I didn't feel like napping so I took pictures with my new Kodak digital camera and even took a video of the surrounding marsh. I sat in the boat and enjoyed the beauty of the marsh and watched the pelicans fly. Occasionally I'd see a couple of ducks flying too.

Joe couldn't sleep so he came back to the boat. We tried to think of ways to get water to the boat. There was a small pot hole of water in the island where we were stuck so we dug a trench to allow the pot hole to drain under the boat's propeller. Joe started the boat and tried to get it moving but it wouldn't budge and it threw all the water out from beneath the boat. We tried to turn the boat around 180 degrees and use the water that was in the path we made through the mud. We got into the mud up to our crotches and pushed and pushed. We got the boat turned half way around and realized we were piling up mud against the side of the boat making it harder and harder to move it. At that point we had the boat pointed straight out into the canal and we knew it had to be in that position when the tide came in, so we stopped there. We resigned to the fact that we had to wait for the tide to come up, whenever that would be.

At 11:30 we noticed the water in the canal 60 yards ahead of us had started to come up. This made us very relieved and confirmed that low tide had indeed been at 10:30 as Joe had said. The water was very slow to rise in the first 30 minutes, but after that it came up quickly. At 1 p.m. we watched as water finally surrounded the boat. We secured everything in the boat, fired it up, let it warm up a bit and slowly inched our way out. In five minutes we were off again headed back to the launch.

Joe was quite happy to be back at the launch!

It wasn't a very good hunt and getting stuck in the mud was not much fun either. We relearned a valuable lesson about the mud boat and things could have been a lot worse. And Joe - don't worry about it buddy. At least we have a story to tell and I'll never again question you about the tide!